Any serious music connoisseur has a list of artists in the back of their mind that they know they will someday explore but just aren't ready for yet. I myself prefer to ignore the lists of "essential" music and let my discoveries happen organically. Sure, I could download torrents of every album on Rolling Stone's or Pitchfork's Greatest Albums Evah list, put them on my ipod and spend a few days trying to digest as much of it as possible, but is that really the best way to listen to music?
In order for an artist to make it on to my ipod they have to slowly creep into my consciousness and earn my trust. Generally, whether I know they're biography or not, I want to, through the music, feel like I understand them on some level. This takes time and can be a slow process, but ultimately tends to be much more rewarding than trying to cram as much music that I'm told to like into my brain, just so I can say I've heard it. Of the great respected white, male, aging, American (or Canadian-sorry Neil) songwriters, only Tom Waits has managed to stay off my ipod. I've done Dylan, Springsteen, Cohen, Costello, Prine...you name it. Of course, I had a copy of Rain Dogs, but I never managed to get far beyond Singapore. For one, the voice just scared me. It really scared me. I like my music to push a little bit, that album was a shove. Sure, Dylan's current voice is a little jarring but he gave a while to get used to it, and even then, it's more Howlin' Wolf than Exorcist. So my copy of Rain Dogs has sat on the shelf abandoned for over year and half.
Finally a few weeks ago, I gave it a go and something clicked. I made it to Hang Down Your Head and things started getting clearer. By Time was I knew this album would be one of my favorites. The next day I checked up on Lala a trading, streaming, and buying site and added all of the Tom Waits albums to my want list. Lala tends to have certain albums available for purchase at really great prices and I noticed Closing Time was just 5 dollars so I decided to bite. I was always under the impression that Closing Time was Tom's singer songwriter album, before he got all weird and good. I was very wrong. His voice isn't as deep and dirty as his other albums, but it's not sugary sweet either. The only song I knew very well before hand was Ol' 55, of Eagles fame. I like the Eagles song alright before, but was amazed at how great the real version was. Playing it on my old out of tune piano made it even sweeter. I've come to love bluesy Virginia Avenue and gorgeous Grapefruit Moon as well. The whole album is great and ends perfectly with the horn laden instrumental, Closing Time. I've only had it for a week, but it's propelled me to purchase cheap cd copies of Swordfishtrombones and Frank's Wild Years from Lala, as well as getting into bidding wars for vinyl copies of Small Change and The Heart of Saturday Night. More on those when I listen to them.
